Category: Music

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Me Myself&I Music

Q

What a LIFE. There are very few black men with a more outstanding life than Quincy Jones. Here’s his infamous interview at 85.

The joy this man brought to me and hundreds of millions of folks. An arranger? That’s a music designer (all creation/conception is design). Quincy designed beautiful, long lasting sonic things.

The threepeat of Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad? GLORY. Bad was awaited on all planet earth, y’all. I was a child in my small village in the middle of France and I remember my step brother going to the store on his moped exclusively to buy the record.

Which sounded like nothing else at the time (listen to Speed Demon!!). Talk about craftmanship, ability to transform yourself, and keeping the jazz and groove going (heard those guitar licks and horns on Speed Demon? Goddamn).

Thriller, the song, was still giving goosebumps to everyone up into the 90s. And yes, that’s just the middle of his life. A Tuesday for Quincy.

I’d read his autobiography in the 00s and was super impressed and almost jealous at the lessons he had had to go through. Hard times, better times. Q seemed to always be processing and looking forward. Loving music more than anything else.

Ninety-one. Not bad for a kid from the 1930s.

I think it’s the first time that a musical giant passes away and I’m just here celebrating his greatness.

Do you like Brazilian music? I do. Thank you, Q.

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Music

Musicality

The 80s’ UK musicality is quite unmatched.

Iron Maiden, Bronski Beat or Sade, same.

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Music

Less is oh, way more

The Real Reason Why Music Is Getting Worse

Rick is right. It’s been a known phenomenon. The buffet style, all you can eat for one fee, leads to irrelevance.

It happened to restaurants and food. It’s happening with streaming and music. It’s happening with streaming and movies and shows. It’s happening with game pass and games.

We saturate our minds so hard, we don’t feel anything anymore. We don’t have time for this. On the production side, everything is optimized against numbers and hype so everything tastes, feels, sounds the same.

Late stage capitalism has ruined our entertainment and greed from both customers and producers is the reason. There, I said it.

The 90s felt like a treasure hunt. In the real world, kids. Most of the time, it felt alienating. “I’m just trying to get that album/video/game ffs!!!” And you would scour like a mf everywhere. Months, maybe years. But when you were getting your hands on that thing oh boy, was it special. Or frustrated, you would go “fuck it, I’ll get that one, not sure” and sometimes it would be the best shit ever. Or maybe not, but you’d spent some money on it and you would realize that it has its quality. Sunk cost fallacy or whatever, you would be alone with that thing and start appreciate it. Maybe it was even making you better at empathy, under forced practice.

We just throw everything out in minutes today. Even the hottest shit that was the hottest just last week. It’s absurd and so wasteful.

Categories
Me Myself&I Music

Amber Mark

Making love to my ears right now.

(I still think a 10-track album is better than a 15+ ones, but whatever)

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Music

Don’t say goodnight

It’s just so beautiful. That ample sound, that beat (sampled by Dilla, of course), those chords. Mmmh.

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Music

My Number One

I just have a thing for that one. Although it doesn’t sound like the real Paramore, I think it just so perfectly encapsulates the 00s pop metal stuff. Catchy, well produced, screaming but also kind of relaxed? Sure no crazy breaks, no style changes, just the same good thing for 3:50mn.

Also it makes me push on my skateboard to go faster. Whatever works, works.

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Audio&Games Music

Music and sound are simply supreme

Lots of nostalgia happening in games right now with the new GTA announcement.

Invariably, it comes down to music. GTA III, GTA Vice City were not that great of games. But Vice City introduced good 80s music to millions of dudes and that’s all they really remember fifteen years later.

You can swap GTA for Minecraft. Or Mario. Or Halo. Music and sound design shape memories like nothing else. It makes the past look better than it was.

Everything visual blurs in our memories. Considering how much effort is poured into textures, animation and 3D models, what a waste.

A distinctive sound, or melody will unearth the most pristine snapshot of that time. And those sounds can be created in an instant. Audio is the closest thing to actual magic.

I recently recovered a one hour and half recording of a dinner with my parents, sister and grandparents from I think 1999 or 2000. I remember that I was testing the microphone quality. Well, it’s really good. I can hear everyone’s voice. Utensils on the table. The dog’s collar and its movements.

It is so powerful, I’ve only been speechless listening to it once.

Hearing my grandparents (both have passed away) talk and laugh is a million times more powerful than looking at a picture of them. Video is cool, but sound is so pure; I can reconstruct the scene in my mind with the recording. It was a winter evening. I know where I was sitting and where everyone was. Grandma tells me how I should try to go door to door to get hired and I can almost remember what I was thinking in that moment.

Sound and smell are just wired at a lower, deeper level than vision.

Unless we wildly genetically change, reading a book while listening to music will always be some of the best thing you can do, ever. ‘love that.

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Music

Bandcamp falling

A bit sad, disturbing and violent.

It’s about to be over. Bandcamp is in the process of being sold. Half of their employees have been laid off.

Bandcamp has been profitable for years. I hoped that Epic buying them would keep them away from hard times, and could actually be a nice synergy. Goddamn.

Fortnite was making $1M a day on one single platform in 2018, and so that’s why Epic didn’t have any money left in 2023 to keep an already profitable business under its wing.

FOH

Categories
Music

Isley

Who Loves You Better just came up on my sound system and, I’m reminded how great the Isley Brothers are at making music and grooves. Mmhmm.

Categories
Music

2000 music

Going through a bunch of music from 2000. It’s not good.

It wasn’t then! But we were just looking where this would go. For instance UK Garage, seemed to be really cool. That 2 Step vibe? Yessir.

By 2001 it was dead though. Gimmicky. No substance. Horrendous remixes.

I had those compilations from Radio Nova, Nova Tunes. I had the first three volumes, which were very much underwhelming at that time and are just sad today. Producers discovering filters and sampling, looking at their expensive Genelec, that’s all I can think about when listening to them now.

Same with Kruder Dorfmeister. Every artist or edgy person in Europe had that album. Every single one of them. I just listened to it skipping all songs one by one because it’s indulgent or boring or plain lame.

I think it demonstrates that musicality is everything; production value in sound doesn’t add that much. It was impressive sound at that time, but musically, it was poor.

It still is.